Ode to Heaven

chorus of spirits.

First Spirit.

Paradise of golden lights!

      Deep, immeasurable, vast,

Which art now, and which wert then!

      Of the Present and the Past,

Of the eternal Where and When,

      Presence-chamber, temple, home,

      Ever-canopying dome,

      Of acts and ages yet to come!

Glorious shapes have life in thee,

Earth, and all earth’s company;

      Living globes which ever throng

Thy deep chasms and wildernesses;

      And green worlds that glide along;

And swift stars with flashing tresses;

      And icy moons most cold and bright,

      And mighty suns beyond the night,

      Atoms of intensest light.

Even thy name is as a god,

Heaven! for thou art the abode

      Of that Power which is the glass

Wherein man his nature sees.

      Generations as they pass

Worship thee with bended knees.

      Their unremaining gods and they

      Like a river roll away:

      Thou remainest such—alway!—

Second Spirit.

Round which its young fancies clamber,

      Like weak insects in a cave,

Lighted up by stalactites;

      But the portal of the grave,

Where a world of new delights

      Will make thy best glories seem

      But a dim and noonday gleam

      From the shadow of a dream!

Third Spirit.

At your presumption, atom-born!

      What is Heaven? and what are ye

Who its brief expanse inherit?

      What are suns and spheres which flee

With the instinct of that spirit

      Of which ye are but a part?

      Drops which Nature’s mighty heart

      Drives through thinnest veins. Depart!

What is Heaven? a globe of dew,

Filling in the morning new

      Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken

On an unimagined world:

      Constellated suns unshaken,

Orbits measureless, are furled

      In that frail and fading sphere,

      With ten millions gathered there,

      To tremble, gleam, and disappear.